Dame Esther Rantzen, the broadcaster and campaigner who founded Childline, has died aged 86, her family has announced.
She died after a battle with lung cancer, which she first disclosed publicly in January 2023.
Her family paid tribute to a “most wonderful mother” and “cherished grandmother”, remembering her for an “endless capacity for joy”.
In December 2023, Dame Esther revealed that she had joined the assisted-dying organisation Dignitas and was considering travelling there to end her life.
Earlier this month, she said it was now too late to “buzz off” to the Swiss clinic, as she spoke of the anguish caused by loved ones having to watch her suffer.
In a statement, she said that although she had “spent the money and made the plans” to travel to Dignitas, she had become “too physically fragile to make the journey”.
Her children revealed that Dame Esther wrote a poignant farewell message before her death.
The message said: “Dear Everybody, I am so sorry I cannot send you each individual thanks for the fun, the support and the help you have been to me. I have been immensely lucky in the friendship and the professional advice I have had from you which has enabled me to live such a long and happy life.
Broadcaster and campaigner Dame Esther Rantzen has died aged 86, her family has announced
Dame Esther pictured with her husband, Desmond Wilcox, at the 53rd Bafta Film Awards in 2000
“If any of you would like to donate something to charity in my name, as a celebration of what we have had together, I do know that the Dignitas charity in Switzerland is facing serious challenges and would be very grateful.
“And Oakhaven Hospice in Lymington has also been wonderful to me. Cathy would, of course, like me to pay tribute to Cats Protection.
“Sadly, all good things come to an end, as they say. So I particularly wanted to say goodbye and thank you so very, very much. Perhaps I will see you eventually, on the other side. I do hope so. With very good wishes, as ever, Esther.”
A statement from her children, Miriam Wilcox, Rebecca Wilcox and Joshua Wilcox, said: “Our adored mother, Dame Esther Rantzen, died today. Her legacy of compassion and understanding will live on through her charities, Childline and Silverline, and through all of us who were lucky enough to love and be loved by her.
“We are grateful that she is finally at rest with her beloved husband, Desmond Wilcox, but we will miss her immeasurably. She was our sunshine. We will always remember her endless capacity for joy, her ability to comfort every heartache, her beautiful way with words and her expert guidance in all things.
“She was the most wonderful mother to the three of us and a cherished grandmother to her five treasured grandchildren. We have been so lucky for so long. However much time we had with Mum, it could never have been enough, but we are deeply grateful for our lives together.
“Mum’s charity work and campaigning, particularly on behalf of children, older people and the terminally ill, meant everything to her. Thank you to everyone who wrote to her, shared their stories over the years and worked alongside her.
“We hope the humour, ingenuity and audacity she brought to her work will continue to inspire you, as it will inspire us. We kindly ask for privacy and time to grieve.”
The broadcaster was diagnosed with lung cancer in January 2023 and was later told that the disease could not be cured.
Dame Esther had previously said she did not expect to live long enough to turn 84, but outlived doctors’ predictions after receiving treatment with an experimental drug.
The presenter, who was made a dame in 2015, was best known as the face of long-running BBC show That’s Life! and for launching the charity ChildLine.
She had three children with her late producer husband Desmond Wilcox, who she had an affair with when he was her boss at the BBC.
Esther Louise Rantzen was born in Berkhamsted, Hampshire, in June 1940, shortly after Britain’s humiliating retreat from Dunkirk in the face of the Nazis’ rampage through France.
One of her earliest memories was of standing in her cot aged around 18 months listening to the wail of air raid sirens.
When she was five, her parents – Harry and Katherine – decided to move the family, which included younger daughter Priscilla, back to the leafy suburbs of Hampstead in north London.
During the war, Dame Esther’s parents sponsored a Jewish boy who had fled Germany aged seven.
When Dame Esther was 10, her father got a job with the United Nations in New York and so the family moved stateside for two years.
Dame Esther Rantzen fronted That’s Life from 1973 until the show came off air in 1994
Dame Esther Rantzen with her husband and their children Emily, joshua and Rebecca in 1986
Dame Esther Rantzen at her home after being diagnosed with cancer
Dame Esther at home in Hampshire with her children and grandchildren
On their return, they lived again in Hampstead. Esther was educated at North London Collegiate, an elite private school for girls.
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Dame Esther remembered the excitement of being the first house on her street to get a television.
It was banished to the hall as her parents believed television ‘killed the art of conversation’.
Instead it was enjoyed by the paper boy, who would spend hours watching it through their letterbox.
The broadcaster described herself as a naughty child, a trait inherited from her mother.
She recalled an occasion when she invited a friend who had ‘an anarchist husband’ to tea.
When her mother entered the room and he didn’t stand up she tipped his chair forward.
Later in life Dame Esther said: ‘The importance of family and hearth and home is central to Judaism and to me.
‘My children will tell you I’m the archetypal Jewish mother. I have a little sign up in my house: ‘Mirror mirror on the wall, I am my mother after all.”
Dame Esther Rantzen on Good Morning Britain in 2020
Dame Esther Rantzen as a child. She spent two years living in America when she was young
Dame Esther pictured right aged four with her younger sister Cilla and their golden retriever Polly, 1944
Esther Rantzen recording an episode of Wagoners’ Walk in 1977
Her father also encouraged the rule-breaker and expected her and her sister to ‘have a career as if [they] were boys.’
Encouraged to go to university, she won a place at Oxford, where she studied English and appeared in plays and revues.
After graduating, Dame Esther got a job at the BBC in a radio sound effects department and then was taken on as a TV researcher.
She was given her first role on screen by Canadian star Bernard Braden, who had his own programme, Braden’s Week.
But it was in 1973 that Dame Esther got her big break with the creation of That’s Life!
She was handpicked as the star of the new show by her future husband, who was head of general features at the BBC.
Dame Esther and Wilcox met when she was on Braden’s Week. The producer was married with three children but the pair could not help falling in love.
Their marriage in 1977 was followed by consternation among BBC colleagues.
Wilcox ended up resigning from his BBC job in 1980 amid accusations he had breached rules by employing his future wife.
But the couple were devoted to each other, to the extent that Wilcox even converted to Judaism.
The birth of their first daughter Emily in early 1978 was followed by the arrival of Rebecca in 1980 and then son Joshua in 1981.
As for Dame Esther’s career, it went from strength to strength. By the late 1970s, That’s Life! was pulling in an incredible 15million viewers.
One of That’s Life!’s most iconic episodes came in the 1988 episode when hero stockbroker Sir Nicholas Winton was introduced to some of the people who he had saved from death in the Holocaust.
In a moment that has been watched millions of times since, Dame Esther said: ‘Is there anybody in our audience tonight who owes their life to Nicholas Winton? If so, can you stand up please.’
After a short pause, four rows of middle-aged people stood up. All of them owed their lives to Sir Nicholas, who was knighted for his heroics in 2003.
Sir Nicholas stood up, acknowledged them all and then sat down to wipe away tears.
The hero had rescued 669 youngsters in Europe by organising Kindertransport trains that brought them to Britain before the outbreak of the Second World War.
He also organised flights that brought children out of Nazi occupied Czechoslovakia on the eve of the conflict.
By the 1990s, what had been the revolutionary formula of That’s Life! looked tired. Amid dwindling viewing figures, the show was axed in 1994.
Dame Esther had by then launched Childline, which grew out of 1986 programme Childwatch.